Organizing soundfont/sample files

[zk]

SimpleSimon asked via Discord:

When saving a Layout, are the samples/soundfonts saved in the project? Or does it just save the links to the sources? I ask because now I have a fair amount of samples and soundfonts, I want to organise them but I`m worried it may break my projects?

[zk]

Hi SimpleSimon, the layout/bundle files do not embed the sounds (some Soundfonts can be 100MB+). The files refer to the sounds via file path, so as you suggest, reorganizing your sounds into different folders would lose those references.

Some things to consider:

• I would recommend against reorganizing the default EXA sounds. These sound paths are important for sharing layouts/bundles with other players, and also when playing in multiplayer. If your default sounds are in a different folder structure, your creations will be incompatible with everyone else's.
  
  
• For your own custom sounds, if you reorganize them, it would break any of your saved layouts/bundles that use those sounds. They will still load, but the ringers will be "semi-transparent" and unplayable until they are given a valid sound path.
  
  
• In the above scenario, you could use EXA to re-apply sounds to those ringers, then resave the layout/bundle. Or, you could open the layout/bundle file in a text editor, and use the search-and-replace tool to swap old sound paths with the new ones. Sound paths are expected to be all lower-case (like "strings/guitars/acoustic_guitars" or "pianos/sc55_piano_v2").
  
  
• Leo and I have discussed other organization ideas, like a search or tags. He has posted some specific ideas (I haven't read through them yet) that I'll re-post in my next comment. In general, the goal here would be to have an organization system that is separate from the file path (like searching for all sounds with the "distorted guitar" tag).

[zk]

Leo2503 wrote via Discord:

regarding the samples organizing: I suggest to use the instrument families as top branch, not the sources.

For example:
- Brass
- Keyboard
- Percussion
- Strings
- Synth
- Woodwind
- Misc

As next layer, the more detailed group of instrument like Piano etc. And inside this the actual sample names with it source behind. Also I would suggest to pre-select the, e.g., top 10 and move all others under "more", so the player does not get overhelmed.

It would also be nice to take out the +1, +2 ... versions and have only the unpitched base version in the list, and then having in the top some buttons for -2,-1,-0,+1,+2 octave, which can be triggered and are then automatically applied on all sample previews.

Another nice option would be a "play/pause all button", which playes one by one the samples inside of the current branch. And finally, to allow the user to give the sample names some marking to mark them as favorite.

For realisation you can keep the folders pathes and file names as they are and just build the new second menu around them, like putting the hole pathes in neat bins for better overview. If you like the suggestion, I can go through the samples and do the reordering. You just need to give me the format in which you can make most use of it. :thumbsup: :headphones:

If this gets implemented, the instrument family names of the samples, which were used in a loop, could also be re-used as default track names in the sequencer.

[zk]

I like the idea of tagging sounds! I'll need to give it some more thought.

EXA could probably provide a default tagging system, but the very next request would be to allow custom tags. Consider an EDM musician, for example, who has no need for most of those default categories, and would rather tag based on some other specific characteristics.

Soundfonts create another challenge, because they can contain several different (and highly varied) sound collections within them. I tried to avoid these ones, but there are a couple default Soundfonts like this (I can think of two in the "synth" section, for example). For these, you'd probably want to apply tags to the individual "presets" within the Soundfont file.

Here's a crazy idea: would it be helpful if EXA could automatically find "similar sounds" for you? EXA would need to keep some kind of "audio profile" for each file, and would then find the best similarity matches for the current sound. That way, if you have a sound that's close to what you want, you could quickly check to see if you have one that's a bit closer.

[zk]

Some more thoughts on this:

Custom tags may not be necessary in the initial feature, but I would at least need to ensure that the tagging system can support them in the future.

Assuming tags can be nested, then you'd probably navigate into the tags using the same "sounds" menu structure that exists now. With this approach, the tags would behave like an alternative folder system. This creates an organization system that can be changed/revised without affecting the way sounds are referenced (via file path) in layouts, bundles, and multiplayer.

[Leo]

yes that would be exactly as I imagined it.

let's start a google sheet, where we list all current samples with their file pathes and then add a column for instrument tag and another for instrument family tag. Then we can work all together on it and make change suggestion comments, if we disagree on something.

We could also add one column, where we can write our names behind the samples, if we want to give the sample a thumb up. and another column for thumb down. Then we can use some math formula to get the stats later.

[Phil Mabole]

So after reading this I am still unsure as to whether or not I can move my own soundfonts and samples away from my Steam (EXA installation directory) to a different drive or does EXA need to be installed on the drive where I want to keep my samples etc.?
Any help appreciated

[zk]

> move my own soundfonts and samples away from my Steam (EXA installation directory)

Yep, you can do that! The easiest way is to place your files into the "My Documents/EXA-VR" directory -- there are are "Soundfonts" and "Samples" folders within that directory.

You can also tell EXA to look at specific directories on your computer. There is an "AppSettings.json" file in EXA's installation files. Please see this comment for notes on where to find it, and how to change it.

[Phil Mabole]

Many Thanks!